Paul Gallen is among the last people you might expect to give advice to the Maroons, but he’s urged his bitter rivals not to overreact to a heavy loss in the second State of Origin clash.
Blues coach Brad Fittler rung the changes for game two, which paid off in spades, but Gallen said that there’s no need for Billy Slater to follow suit.
“I thought in game one, New South Wales didn’t play to their potential, to be honest,” he told Nine’s 100% Footy.
“The Queenslanders played really, really good … and the Blues just didn’t play as good as they could, and I thought last night, they did.
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“I think they won the battle in the middle in the middle of the field, which goes a long way to winning the match, obviously.”
Fittler brought in Api Koroisau, Jake Trbojevic, Angus Crichton, Siosifa Talakai, and Matt Burton for the second game, dropping several players while also losing game one standout Jack Wighton to COVID.
Barring injury concerns over a couple of stars, Gallen said Queensland should not do the same.
“I don’t think they’ve got to make a lot of changes, and I don’t think they will – as we said, it’s one-all,” he said.
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It will be all to play for in game three on July 13, and you’d imagine the Blues will be heavy favourites – but we’ve seen this movie before with the Maroons.
“Origin I is a real reminder of what they’re capable of,” former Blues coach Phil Gould said.
“When you get Queensland into a grind, a game that’s going to be decided by less than four points … they’ve got a very good record in those types of games.”
Neither Gallen nor Gould was worried about the deluge of late points that went against Queensland, both agreeing that one eye was already on Suncorp Stadium.
“That does not happen in Origin football, and it certainly doesn’t happen to Queensland,” Gould said, referring to solo tries from Nathan Cleary (twice) and Jarome Luai.
“They can sit there at the press conference and say that every player tried their heart out, and they probably did, and they probably felt as thought they were trying. But as a team, the balloon pricked at the 58th minute.
“The steam went out of them, they said ‘ah well, we’ve got Brisbane in game three, let’s get ready for that’.”
“They’ve got that safety net,” Gallen added.
“In the back of their mind, when things get really, really hard at the back end of the game, they’ve got the safety net that they’ve still got a decider up in Brisbane.”
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